Energy efficient mobile user tracking system with node activation mechanism using wireless sensor networks

User localization in wireless sensor networks have been given a great attention in recent times and also considered to be one of the promising applications. Many approaches for the same have been proposed based on range based and range free mechanisms for localizing the user. Similarly, tracking the user in a sensor field has also been given equal importance in association with localization. Techniques employing both these methods are mostly based on static anchor nodes or scheduling system which compromises on the lifetime of wireless sensor network. Considering the constraint of network lifetime this paper proposes localizing and tracking method with an activation scheme for tracking the mobile node efficiently while increasing the network lifetime. The system has been tested on two scenarios suggesting that the proposed method can provide the flexibility to the system which could be adjusted with reference to the user requirements. The first scenario suggests that all the nodes are activated only when the mobile user enters but as the user is localized all the nodes will get deactivated except the concerned nodes. The second scenario suggests that a predefined deployment strategy is provided with only 10% of activated nodes. The experimental results show that the proposed system achieves a better trade-off in terms of accuracy and computational complexity for single mobile node tracking.